Home
In this issue
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review August 10, 2007 / 26 Menachem-Av 5767

40,000 Year-old Baby

By Greg Crosby


Printer Friendly Version
Email this article

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Have you heard the one about the 40,000 year-old baby mammoth that was discovered in Russia? Even though this sounds like the beginning of a Jay Leno joke it is actually true — at least as reported by the Reuters news agency on Wednesday, July 11th. The story said that a baby mammoth had been uncovered, preserved in the Russian permafrost in the Artic Yamalo-Nenetsk region. The species has been extinct since the Ice Age, but a reindeer hunter found her carcass in perfect condition sticking out of the snow. No kidding.


Alexie Tikhonov, deputy director of the Russian Academy of Science's Zoological Institute, said, "It's a lovely little baby mammoth indeed, found in perfect condition. This specimen may provide unique material allowing us to ultimately decipher the genetic makeup of the mammoth." Tikhonov has been taking care of the mammoth since it was uncovered in May.


The mammoth is a six-month old female and now she even has a name. They're calling her "Lyuba" after the wife of reindeer breeder and hunter Yuri Khudi who found her. Weighing 50 kg (110 lb), and measuring 85 centimeters high and 130 centimeters from trunk to tail, Lyuba is roughly the same size as a large dog.


Tikhonov said the fact the mammoth was so remarkably well-preserved — its shaggy coat was gone but otherwise it looked as though it had only recently died — meant it was a potential treasure trove for scientists. "Such a unique skin condition protects all the internal organs from modern microbes and micro-organisms ... In terms of its future genetic, molecular and microbiological studies, this is just an unprecedented specimen."


Eventually Lyuba will be will shipped to the Zoological Museum in St Petersburg where she will join a male baby mammoth called Dima who was unearthed in Magadan in Russia's Far East in 1977 and until now was Russia's best-known example of the species. "They will make a nice couple, both roughly aged 40,000 years," Tikhonov said. Isn't that nice? Talk about an icy romance. A match made in Siberia.


But, now don't cry, there will be a brief separation of the couple. From St Petersburg, Lyuba will go to Jikei University in Japan to undergo three-dimensional computer mapping of her body. The mammoth will then return to St Petersburg for an autopsy before being put on display in Salekhard.


On the one hand I realize this find can be enormously beneficial for scientific study. Intellectually I get it. On the other hand, it bothers me a bit that a creature that has been buried for 40,000 years in a frozen state that has allowed it to retain much of it's original form has now been uncovered and will undoubtedly begin to slowly decompose. Yes, they will do whatever they can, use the latest technology available in an effort to retard decomposition, but the reality is, the mammoth will not be preserved as well as it was when it was frozen beneath centuries of ice. And that's too bad.


I feel the same way whenever I read about archeologists digging up some ancient grave sites. I don't care that the graves are 2,000 years old — leave them alone! Is there a time limit on how long a person's grave is allowed to remain untouched? Why is it okay to dig up a body from 300B.C. but it is forbidden to dig up a body from 1903? Is it because there is less of a physical body there? Is it because all immediate family members have also died, so now it's fine to pull it out? Has enough time passed so that a person's grave is no longer considered sacred ground? If it's sacred now, why won't it be sacred three hundred years from now?


This probably falls into the category of "Don't Mess with Other People's Stuff," of which I am a firm believer. My home is my home, you don't have a right to walk in without permission and just start going through the closets and dresser drawers. You don't have the right to hotwire my car and take it for a little drive along the coast. You don't have the right to take my money, or my clothes, or my pet, or my wife. And you don't have the right to dig me up after I'm dead and go through my remains.


There can be extenuating circumstances of course, like if I'm selling dope to preschoolers or something, in that case the authorities can, and should, go through my house, go through my things, go through my car, arrest me and put me away forever. But some guy who doesn't even know me has no right to just, out of a clear blue sky, take my stuff away from me (like some Democrat politicians would love to do). It's not fair. It's not right.


But will the rest of the world listen to me? — No. It will carry on just as it always has. It will dig up that poor little 40,000 year-old mammoth, dissect her, study her, ship her around the globe, put her on display, expose her for all the world to see, spend a fortune on publicity, E-mail her photo across the internet, and do unending stories on her in the media … but remember one thing, all that could happen to YOU, too. If you don't believe me just ask Paris Hilton.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


JWR contributor Greg Crosby, former creative head for Walt Disney publications, has written thousands of comics, hundreds of children's books, dozens of essays, and a letter to his congressman. A freelance writer in Southern California, you may contact him by clicking here.

Greg Crosby Archives

© 2006, Greg Crosby

Insight (Our Columnists)

 Arnold Ahlert
 Mitch Albom
 Michael Barone
  Dave Barry
 Tony Blankley
 Andy Borowitz
 David Broder
 Stratfor Briefing
 Mona Charen
 Linda Chavez
 Ann Coulter
 Greg Crosby
 Larry Elder
 Suzanne Fields
 John Fund
 Frank J. Gaffney
 Lloyd Garver
 Jonah Goldberg
 Julia Gorin
 Jonathan Gurwitz
 Paul Greenberg
 Lewis Grossberger
 Victor Davis Hanson
 Betsy Hart
 Nat Hentoff
 David Horowitz
 Laura Ingraham
 Cheri Jacobus
Jeff Jacoby
 Paul Johnson
 Jack Kelly
 Ed Koch
 Ch. Krauthammer
 Michael Ledeen
 John Leo
 David Limbaugh
 Kathryn Lopez
 Rich Lowry
 Michelle Malkin
 Jackie Mason
 Dick Morris
 Bill O'Reilly
 Jim Mullen
 Clarence Page
 Kathleen Parker
 Dennis Prager
 Wesley Pruden
 Tom Purcell
 Jonathan Rauch
 Celia Rivenbark
 Robert Robb
 Cokie & Steve Roberts
 Pat Sajak
 Debra J. Saunders
 Culture Shlock
 Roger Simon
 Michael Smerconish
 Thomas Sowell
 Mark Steyn
 John Stossel
 Cal Thomas
 Bob Tyrrell
 Diana West
 Dave Weinbaum
 George Will
 Walter Williams
 Byron York
 Mort Zuckerman

'Toons
 Robert Arial
 Chuck Asay
 Baloo
 Chip Bok
 Dry Bones
  Lisa Benson
 John Branch
 Gary Brookins
 John Cole
 J. D. Crowe
 John Deering
 Brian Duffy
 Everything's Relative
 Mallard Fillmore
 Jake Fuller
 Bob Gorrel
 Joe Heller
 David Hitch
 Jerry Holber
 Steve Kelley
 Jeff Koterba
 Dick Locher
 Chan Lowe
 Ranan R. Lurie
 Jimmy Margulies
 Rick McKee
 Michael Ramirez
 Kevin Siers
 Jeff Stahler
 Ed Stein
 Danna Summers
 John Trever
 Gary Varvel
 Kirk Walters

Lifestyles
 How 2
 Lori Borgman
 The Savvy Consumer
 Elder matters
 Fixit
 Dr. Peter Gott
 GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
 Richard Lederer
 Tech Maven
 Every Monday Matters
 Nutrition Myths
 Bookmark These
 Bruce Williams
 How Stuff Works